Monday's are my favorite!

With my current schedule, I am totally free on Monday's. This is such a blessings! I use the time to do household things that I would have normally done on the weekend. [Though Sunday I did clean a little because Joe was around to help ;-) ]

Just to give you a peek into my Monday, here is how it goes:

6:00-8:00 (depending on the day): Wake up and change the sheets. I am a fanatic about changing the sheets every week, and clean sheets are one of my favorite things EVER. However, folding the sheets in another story. Our big king bed can be quite the challenge. So usually, even thought we have 3 sets, I wash, and then put back on the same ones. That leaves the bed unmade for a few hours, which I don't love - but can handle. ;-)

Then I make some coffee and get to work reading blogs, checking email, responding, reading news stories, etc. Because Monday's are more laid back in the morning, I usually get to take more prayer time as well.

Finish any laundry left over from last week. Usually I try to do a load or 2 during the week to keep the work load down. I realize that with only 2 people, we don't produce a lot of dirty clothes, but someday there will be more little people joining us who make a lot of laundry, and it is good to have a little routine now to fall back on.

Clean. Not too hard with our 2 bed/2 bath home, and I keep that to a minimum by picking up and tidying things all week long.

Meal plan and grocery shop. Joe did the meal planning this week and next (We try to do 2 weeks at a time) which was great! It isn't everything I would have picked, but I love that he wanted to help plan and of course picked all his favorite meals (lots of meat and potatoes, especially on October 4th - our engagement anniversary and the feast of St. Francis - "Let the meat hang from the walls!".

Now I just have to head to Freddy's to get all the goods.

I try to be home from the store around 11:00 (won't happen today), wash the produce, put everything away and then busy myself with other tasks.

Today I need to run some errands aside from the grocery store (Macy's and Target), finish a sewing project I am working on, (put the sheets back on the bed), head to my mom's to drop off stuff for her garage sale next week (If you are around, come check it out, there are lots of great things!) and prep some dinners for this week. There are also some family business things I need to get done - bill paying schedule, paper filing system (for being an organizer myself, I still haven't mastered paper management the way I hope to someday). Maybe there is something on this website that Lindsey blogged about today- Organizing Junkie

On my list of fun things to do, I also need to write my dear friend Sr. Cora Marie (used to be Kathy Webb) a letter. All last year I wrote her once a week, but this year she can't receive mail except for her feast day, Christmas and Easter. So I have been writing once a month.

I hope you all have a productive Monday! Let me know if you have tip for paper order too! PLEASE!

Pretty darm proud of myself!

Proud in a good way ;-)
Look what I made today ....


Since we have glass doors in both our bathrooms and I wanted to add some color, but without a shower curtain, that is hard. The above color is in Joe's bathroom ;-)


We got the dining room furniture a few weeks ago and hung the curtains last week. Joe provided the flowers ;-)

I made the bedroom curtains today, and the 2 cute pillows to match with the extra fabric. Now the room seems complete to me. Hooray! I love the neutral color of our bedding which made for any color to be the accent. We picked blue and painted one wall that color and the curtains are blue too.

Another glass door in my bathroom---- We have brown and light teal towels in there, so I made some curtains to match the teal color. I think it makes it look very nice. Just how I imagined. I do like the style I picked for Joe's bathroom a little better.

Seven Things I love ...

Tagged by Cheri over at As the Family Goes.... Thanks!

Seven Things I LOVE!

1) Joe! Being married to Joe. Talking about how cool it is to finally be married. Be watching a movie or cleaning the house or driving somewhere and saying .... "ummm We are married!" It still doesn't get old and is so fun.

2) Though I miss Minnesota and our friends there very much - I LOVE being in Washington and seeing either my family or Joe's family every weekend. We have been having a great time doing little adventures around the state. Last weekend, we went to Zillah and went to 3 different wineries.

3) Reading about and learning things I never knew. As I mentioned in a previous post I have been reading Beautiful Boy. It is a book writen by a father about his son who is addicted to drugs and they cycles of heartaches he and the rest of his family go through. I am facinated by this whole other world that I had no idea about.... The book is honest and thoughtful. The father is a writer for the New York Times and is very eloquent in his heartfelt love and deep suffering as he watches his son destroy his life. Everyone knows about suffering and heartache - David Sheff makes his come alive on the page. He isn't a man of faith, but slowly comes to see God as necessary.

4) Lazy mornings, hot coffee, catching up on good prayer time, reading books and blogs and new recipes to make for the week.

5) Being crafty. I made 2 sets of curtains and feel so accomplished.

6) Thinking about, talking about, praying about, and trying to make real long term goals or ideas. There are so many things we want to see, do, experience, try ..... It is fun to dream, and to make a reality.

7) New friends, old friends, catching up, getting to know, and loving people where they are at.

You are supposed to tag 7 people, some I would tag have already been tagged .... but check out their posts and new people can participate!
Kristine, Carrie, Laura, Sarah D, Janelle, Amelia

Warm Memories

After my dad went through his cancer treatments 15 years ago, he was perpetually cold. To conquer that, he nearly always wore a turtle neck with a sweatshirt over it. This past October when we were going through my dad's clothes to donate them, I decided to same some key pieces - 6 sweatshirts. I had no intention of doing anything with them, just having them to look at and hold ans smell and remember my dad. As I was looking at them in a bag one day, I said to myself that if I don't do anything with them, they will just sit in that bag and in 5 years I will probably donate them too. Well, I didn't want that to happen, so I decided to make a blanket with them.

A blanket made of sweatshirts, to keep me warm, just like they kept my dad warm all those years.

The black and white fabric was not a sweatshirt - obviously. It was just to make the blanket bigger and give it some dimension. I used one of my old sweatshirts too, because I needed 2 more squares to make it even. Having Monday off helped me to sit down and just finish it, and early this morning, I hand stitched the corners so they would be extra secure.

I am so thankful that I saved those sweatshirts and made a blanket. Years for now, as I snuggle up with the blanket, and hopefully a few kids in tow, I can share with them wonderful stories about their grandpa, who went to Heaven before they could meet him.